A member of staff works in the cockpit of an aircraft on the Eurofighter Typhoon production line at BAE systems Warton plant near Preston, northern England.(Reuters / Phil Noble) / Reuters

Arms manufacturers currently have dozens of employees seconded to the Ministry of Defence (MoD) and other British government agencies, an investigation has discovered.

The revelations
highlight the close relationship between business and government,
especially in highly lucrative industries such as the arms
trade.

Employees from BAE Systems (manufacturers of the Eurofighter
Typhoon), MBDA (makers of missiles), Babcock (defense contractor
working on Trident nuclear submarine replacement), and MSI
(gunnery systems producer) have all taken senior level roles
within the MoD.

BAE systems, the second largest arms company in the world, has
had more than 10 executives seconded to the MoD and the arms
sales unit of UK Trade & Investment (UKTI) in the last year.

The MoD’s Equipment and Support Branch, which has a £14 billion
annual budget to buy equipment for the armed forces, hosted nine
BAE executives in senior positions, the investigation by the
Guardian found.

UKTI Defence and Security Organisation, another government
department, had four secondments from BAE, two from MBDA, and two
from Detica, a cyber-security specialist acquired by BAE in 2010.

While on secondment, salaries are paid by the company and not by
the government department they join.

Personnel exchange between business and government works in the
opposite direction as well, with 13 civil servants having been
seconded from the MoD to outside organizations, including
cyber-security company Templar Executives, Lloyds Banking group,
arms firm QinetiQ, defense think tank the Institute for Security
and Resilience Studies (ISRS) and the BBC.

The Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) described the arrangement
as “totally inappropriate.”

Speaking to the Guardian, Andrew Smith of CAAT said, “Arms
companies already enjoy a significant and totally
disproportionate level of government support, and these kinds of
secondments only make it more so.

“It is totally inappropriate for arms companies that will be
lobbying for extra military spending to be working for
departments that buy their wares.”

Natalie Bennett, the leader of the Green Party, said the British
government’s relationship with arms manufacturers was
“uncomfortably close.”

“All too often we’ve seen the government’s actions aligned
with the interests of big business, which is particularly
concerning when the businesses involved produce weapons,”
she told the Guardian.

“For many years, the British government has had an
uncomfortably close relationship with arms manufacturers and a
shady record of arming dictatorships to match.”

“Secondments like these cast a shadow of doubt over the
integrity over the actions of both the MoD and UKTI when it comes
to their dealings with arms manufacturers. Our policies should
serve the common good and must be free from the influence of
vested interests like arms companies.”

The Guardian’s revelations come in the wake of the HSBC tax
avoidance scandal in which the revolving door between financial
institutions and government has also faced scrutiny.

Lord Green, the former head of HSBC, came under the spotlight for
having taken the role of Minister of State for Trade and
Investment immediately after leaving the bank.

Leaked documents allege that during Green’s tenure as Chairman of
HSBC from 2006 to 2010, he oversaw the orchestration of
industrial scale tax evasion for drug dealers, international
criminals, dictators and terrorists.

Lord Green stood down from a senior position in the banking lobby
group The City UK on Saturday.